Review of Greenhouse Effect’s Roadkiller overdrive

I’m excited to talk about the Greenhouse Effect Roadkiller overdrive. Roy from Greenhouse effects sent over a couple of pedals to demo, and we’ll start things off with the Roadkiller. The road killer is a great sounding overdrive with solid mid-range. Greenhouse effects are built well with a sturdy enclosure and quality pots/knobs and footswitch. This overdrive breaks up enough to be almost fuzz like, but can also keep a tight overdrive sound. It’s a very versatile pedal that will sound great with clean amps or high gain amps.

Here is the official description of the Roadkiller by Greenhouse Effects:

This is the one you’ve been looking for.

The Roadkiller is designed to give you outstanding guitar tone on any setup in any occasion. built from the ground up, the Roadkiller has cascaded FET gain stages, finely tuned to deliver the thick and complex sound and feel of a tube amp in overdrive.

It does so without coloring the sound of your guitar and amp.

Tones range from warm articulated clean,through smooth saturation into a thick crunch and finally to an all out fat and tight distortion.

* Amazing note separation
* Highly responsive to picking dynamics
* Control the gain using your guitar’s volume knob,and it cleans almost completely even on high gain settings without becoming dark or dull!
* True bypass!

The Roadkiller will make your guitar sound bigger ,and will enhance your playing experience.

For the demo, I again enlisted the help of long time friend, Jimmy Rolle. He played the Greenhouse Effects Roadkiller using a Les Paul Goldtop with P90s through a Rivera Knucklehead 100/Marshall 4×12. The demo was mic’d with a AKG Solidtube and Shure SMf7.

We did two demos. The first demo is the pedal using ‘cleanish’ amp settings:

Additionally, we have high quality MP3 of the demo via SoundCloud

The second demo is using high gain amp settings:

Additionally, we have high quality MP3 of the demo via SoundCloud

I also wanted to get a little bit more information from Roy the creator of the Greenhouse Effects Roadkiller, so here is a short interview:

Where is Greenhouse Effects Located?

Greenhouse effects is located in a Kibbutz in northern Israel.

How long have you been developing pedals?

I’ve been making pedals for about six years,mostly custom works for musicians.a certain style has evolved throughout the years.

What got you into pedal development?

The concept of making a work tool for musicians was inspiring.I was playing guitar at several bands and needed a good overdrive pedal that would sound huge on stage.first  i started tinkering the old Ts design and came out with the first version of the Goldrive,(today,the MKIII is very different although it implements some of the same ideas) I’ve leaned a lot through this experience and it sparked the passion for making my own pedals.

What did you want to achieve with the RoadKiller?

The Roadkiller was challenging because i had great ambitions for it. I wanted to make a huge sounding overdrive that simply oozes with tone,it hadto be very dynamic and responsive. But that wasn’t enough.i wanted it to have an extremely wide range of tones,it took several months to achieve,but the final result is very satisfying,it’s like having a booster,an overdrive and a distortion in one box.

How is the RoadKiller different than other similar pedals. What was the objective with this?

The Roadkiller is different in several ways.first it has three different eq settings,depending on how you set the gain knob; Minimum gain- flat eq (to be used as a booster) Medium gain- mid frequencies are emphasized (to push a tube amp without getting too muddy) High gain-gives you lots of bottom end for a thick rock distortion tone. the tone knob works correspondingly with the gain knob and should be set accordingly in order to achieve the desired tone. another difference might be that as you tone down the volume on your guitar,you never loose presence.it cleanse very well and you don’t loose treble frequencies. and since there are cascaded FET gain stages being used ,the note definition is superb,

Overall,it might take a bit of exploring in order to utilize this pedal to the fullest,but once you do this pedal can provide a rich pallet of tones.

What is the next pedal in development?

the next pedal is a modulation effect,already in progress(Stone fish)

The Greenhouse Effects Roadkiller Overdrive sells around $185USD. You can purchase this pedal at these find Greenhouse Effects Dealers online!

PedalGeek
StepUpGuitars
MontreuxGuitars

For more information about Greenhouse Effects, please check out their website and check them out on Facebook!